People's Commissariat for Education

The People's Commissariat for Education (or Narkompros; Russian: Народный комиссариат просвещения, Наркомпрос, directly translated as the "People's Commissariat for Enlightenment") was the Soviet agency charged with the administration of public education and most other issues related to culture. In 1946, it was transformed into the Ministry of Education. Its first head was Anatoly Lunacharsky. However he described Nadezhda Krupskaya as the "soul of Narkompros".^[1] Mikhail Pokrovsky, Dmitry Leshchenko and Evgraf Litkens also played important roles.

Lunacharsky protected most of the avant-garde artists such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin and Vsevolod Meyerhold. Despite his efforts, the official policy after Joseph Stalin put him in disgrace.

Narkompros had seventeen sections,^[2] in addition to the main ones related to general education, e.g.,

• Likbez, a section for liquidation of illiteracy,
• "Profobr", a section for professional education,
• Glavlit, a section for literature and publishing (also in charge of censorship in publishing),
• "Glavrepertkom" (Главрепертком), a commission for approval of performers' repertoires.
• Department of the Mobilisation of Scientific Forces, to which the Russian Academy of Sciences reported after 1918.
• TEO, the Theatre Department which published Vestnik Teatra
• Vneshkol'nyi Otdel, the adult Education Department run by Krupskaya
• "Glavpolitprosvet", in charge of political education out of school

Some of these evolved into separate entities, others discontinued.